Quotes By Author: Tahereh Mafi
“I love the sight of his naked body.especially in these quiet, vulnerable moments. These brackets of time stapled between dreams and reality are my favorite. There’s a sweetness in this hesitant consciousness – a careful, gentle return of form of function, I’ve found I love these minutes most for the delicate way in which they unfold. It’s tender.Slow motion.Time tying its shoes.”
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“They filled our world with weapons aimed at foreheads and smiled as they shot 16 candles right through our future. They killed those strong enough to fight back and locked up the freaks who failed to live up to their utopian expectations.”
“And I do. I do wonder, I think about it all the time. What it would be like to kill myself. Because I never really know, I still can’t tell the difference, I’m never quite certain whether or not I’m actually alive. I sit here every single day. Run, I said to myself. Run until your lungs collapse, until the wind whips and snaps at your tattered clothes, until you’re a blur that blends into the background. Run, Juliette, run faster, run until your bones break and your shins split and your muscles atrophy and your heart dies because it was always too big for your chest and it beat too fast for too long and you run.Run run run until you can’t hear their feet behind you. Run until they drop their fists and their shouts dissolve in the air. Run with your eyes open and your mouth shut and dam the river rushing up behind your eyes. Run, Juliette.Run until you drop dead. Make sure your heart stops before they ever reach you. Before they ever touch you.Run, I said.”
“Hope.It’s like a drop of honey, a field of tulips blooming in the springtime. It’s a fresh rain, a whispered promise, a cloudless sky, the perfect punctuation mark at the end of a sentence. And it’s the only thing in the world keeping me afloat.”
“I’m not sure. But there’s something about the darkness, the stillness of this hour, I think, that creates a language of its own. There’s a strange kind of freedom in the dark; a terrifying vulnerability we allow ourselves at exactly the wrong moment, tricked by the darkness into thinking it will keep our secrets. We forget that the blackness is not a blanket; we forget that the sun will soon rise. But in the moment, at least, we feel brave enough to say things we’d never say in the light.”
“I’m not an idiot, Kenji. I have reasons for the things I say.”“Yeah, and maybe I’m just saying that you have no idea what you’re saying.”“Whatever.”“Don’t whatever me—”“Whatever,” I say again.“Oh my God,” Kenji says to no one in particular. “I think this girl wants to get her ass kicked.”“You couldn’t kick my ass if I had ten of them.”Kenji laughs out loud. “Is that a challenge?””It’s a warning,” I say to him.“Ohhhhhh, so you’re threatening me now? Little crybaby knows how to make threats now?”“Shut up, Kenji.”“Shut up, Kenji,” he repeats in a whiny voice, mocking me.”
“Kenji has a hand pressed to his mouth, desperately trying to suppress a smile. He’s shaking his head, holding up a hand in apology. And then he breaks, laughing out loud, snorting as he tries to muffle the sound. “I’m sorry,” he says, pressing his lips together, shaking his head again. “This is not a funny moment. It’s not. I’m not laughing”
“Kenji snorts.“That’s because you’re not fragile,” Kenji says. “If anything, everyone needs to protect themselves from you. You’re like a freaking beast,” he says. Then adds, “I mean, you know—like, a cute beast. A little beast that tears shit up and breaks the earth and sucks the life out of people.”
“Have you ever had a girlfriend, Kenji?””What?” He looks mortally offended. “Do I look like the kind of guy who’s never had a girlfriend? Have you even met me?”
“Please,” he says. “I’m begging you to stop.”I still. “I can’t stomach your pain,” he says. “I can feel it so strongly and it’s making me crazy- please,” he says to me. “Don’t be sad. Or hurt. Or guilty. You’ve done nothing wrong.” “I’m sorry-“”Don’t be sorry, either,” he says. “God, the only reason I’m not going to kill Kent for this is because I know it would only upset you more.”
“I touch the tip of my finger to his lips. “There are secrets in here,” I say. “I want them out.”He tries to bite my finger.I steal it back.”
“I love you,” I whisper. “I love you exactly as you are.”
“That this girl would know exactly how to shatter me.”